The highest response for the Christian to God, what we were designed to do and will consume our focus when we are fully united with God in Heaven, is to worship. Philippians 2:9-10 says “Therefore God exalted him [Jesus] to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.”

John Piper wrote, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the Church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man.”¹ The drive to worship God should motivate all that we do; “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31) Scriptures point time and again to the idea that our natural response to God is to worship Him, and that ultimately, when we are faced with His glory in eternity, there will be no other response possible. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, worship, or giving glory to God, is tied to all that we do – even activities as mundane as eating and drinking. How we work in our jobs, how we interact with others, how we serve in our neighborhoods and in our churches, all should bring glory to God. Even Piper’s comment bears relevance; the Great Commission, the calling to reach a lost world is ultimately based on the reality that not all creation worships God.

The challenge is our flesh and our sin nature; while we are created to worship God, sin has corrupted our nature. Even as imperfect believers, it is easy for us to lose sight of that high calling. Tozer writes, “Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a God we can in some measure control.”² Yet, this is the opposite of worship – creating a (false) god we can control is worship, but it is worship of our own wisdom instead of the Creator.

Boa asks the question, what if you only had one year to live? How would that shape your priorities?³ In our core, we know the things of the Spirit, of the soul, of the eternal are what truly matter. While busyness routinely draws our attention to the temporal, what truly matters is revealed in times of crisis, of sickness, of death. In those moments we find it easy to focus on the spiritual. The challenge is in learning to have that perspective throughout life, not just in the briefest of moments. As believers, we must recognize the temporary nature of our physical lives, that it is just vapor rapidly disappearing (James 4:14). This perspective is not a dark one, it is instead one filled with hope. Letting go of the temporal things to instead pursue worship of God in all areas of life, to challenge others to that same worship, that is the highest calling and one that gives our lives the meaning and purpose they were designed to have. It gives us a taste of the unfettered, perfect worship we will one day experience in eternity with God our Creator.

—————

1.  Ralph Winter and Steven Hawthorne, Perspectives On the World Christian Movement: Reader and Study Guide, 4 ed. (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 2013), Kindle location 7313.

2.   A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009), 9.

3.  Kenneth Boa, Conformed to His Image: Biblical and Practical Approaches to Spiritual Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), Kindle location 956.